LIFE CYCLE MANAGEMENT MATRIX – OPTIMISING LIFE CYCLE MAINTENANCE OF NAVAL SHIPS

摘要

The demand for increasing the operational availability of the naval ships is at its peak due to the increasing mission commitments across the world. The exponential cost of building complex naval ships coupled with the global economic slowdown has constrained even the most powerful governments from venturing in to the programs for fleet expansion at a rate proportional to the existing demand. This situation has forced the world navies and leading naval ship builders to focus on optimizing and strategizing the maintenance aspects of the naval platforms and the equipment onboard in order to provide enhanced availability and a robust Life Cycle Management of the assets. The requirement is to increase the operational availability of the existing assets through the implementation of efficient maintenance strategies and to optimize the life cycle maintenance of the future assets through the application of logistics engineering right through the Conceptual, Engineering and Production phase up until the Operational and Disposal phase. The engineering decisions taken during the various phases of the life cycle of a naval platform is not only relevant from an overall cost perspective but also has the potential to make serious impact on the efficiency and availability of the platform to deliver the role and functions envisaged during the conceptual stages. This paper focus on the use of advanced technologies and identifying the key areas of logistics engineering which needs to be considered during the life cycle of a naval platform for optimizing the maintenance requirements and to establish an efficient and cost effective Through Life Support program by the application of Integrated Logistic Support principles.